Slide-guitarist Luke Winslow-King joins Ross Boissoneau to discuss influential records by Bob Dylan, Ry Cooder and Mark Knopfler.

Released 10 years ago this month, ‘UFO Has Landed’ was definitive in a way the always-restless Ry Cooder never quite allowed himself to be.

By the time Eric Clapton gathered a working band in support 1983’s Money and Cigarettes (home to the Top 10 U.S. hit “I’ve Got a Rock ‘n’ Roll Heart”), the guitarist was clean and sober. You May Also Like: Eric Clapton, “Motherless Child” from ‘From the Cradle’ (1994): One TrackRead More

Ry Cooder has a way with words, a way with song. He can catch a nasty groove, and toss off a ripped-from-the-headlines insult like nobody this side of Bob Dylan. Who can forget the way he cuffed around unscrupulous bankers last year? You May Also Like: Ry Cooder’s ‘The UFORead More

Tough times call for angry protest records, for political records, for records that produce rueful smiles. Ry Cooder has done that and more with “No Banker Left Behind,” a tart treatise on the recent financial meltdown You May Also Like: Ry Cooder’s ‘The UFO Has Landed’ Finally Put His AmazingRead More

by S. Victor Aaron Today, John Hiatt is among the leading American folk-rock singer-songwriters, standing in stature just below Springsteen and Mellencamp, but it was no overnight success story for him. Hiatt struggled to get traction on his career for over a dozen years after releasing his first album inRead More

In anybody else’s hands, this new Mavis Staples album would have been a museum piece, interesting but ultimately dust-covered and remote. Not that “We’ll Never Turn Back” (to be issued on Tuesday by Anti- records) doesn’t have plenty of right things to say, and certainly plenty of righteous things, inRead More